Joseph Calleia Movies

The stringent censorship imposed upon Hollywood of the mid-1930s dictated that gangsters could no longer be the "heroes" in any crime film. Public Hero No. 1 reflects this restriction. G-Man Chester Morris poses as a crook to infiltrate the notorious Purple Gang, a band of hoodlums which preys upon other hoodlums. Orchestrating the jailbreak of the Gang's leader (Joseph Calleia), Morris joins him in a Dillinger-like flight across the country. The bloody denouement, which occurs in a vaudeville theatre, is likewise drawn from the Dillinger saga (that particular gentleman was of course killed in front of a movie house). Also featured in Public Hero No. 1 is Jean Arthur as the heroine (a comic role) and Lionel Barrymore as a drunken gang doctor. The film was remade as The Getaway in 1942. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Sinner Takes All shines with the production gloss only MGM could create; the prettiness of the images helps to hide the plot holes in this modest murder mystery. The members of an aristocratic family are murdered one by one, in retribution for the misdeeds of the family's black sheep. Margaret Lindsay is the heroine, Bruce Cabot the hero, and Joseph Calleia a man who is hiding something. As a publicity ploy, the film also featured journalist Dorothy Kilgallen, fresh from a headline-grabbing "round the world" tour. Capped by an ironic ending in which the killer surprisingly refuses to boast about his modus operandi, Sinner Takes All was one of three MGM "B" thrillers filmed virtually back-to-back in 1936 by prolific studio contractee Errol Taggart. The film was based on the novel Murder for a Wanton by Whitman Chambers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this polished soap opera from MGM, Robert Taylor plays Chris Claybourne, a dedicated scientist researching a possible cure for spotted fever. However, Chris has a dark side; he has a weakness for gambling and has fallen into debt with a gangster named Fish Eye (Joseph Calleia). While visiting a casino, Chris meets Rita Wilson (Barbara Stanwyck), a gambler's shill who does some modeling on the side. Chris and Rita quickly fall in love, and when Chris is due to leave for South America on a research expedition, Rita begs him to stay with her. However, Fish Eye has been leaning on Chris for his money, and when he asks his brother Tom (John Eldridge) for a loan to pay off the debt, he agrees under one condition -- that Chris leave for South America right away, and without Rita. When Chris ships out, Rita believes that he left her behind because he didn't care for her, and to hurt him, she marries Tom and takes Chris's IOU. However, by the time Chris returns, Rita's marriage with Tom is in tatters and she's desperate to win back Chris's affection. In real life, Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck were an item while shooting His Brother's Wife, and they married three years later. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Warner Baxter does a variation of his Oscar-winning "Cisco Kid" characterization in Robin Hood of El Dorado. Baxter plays the real-life Mexican bandit Joaquin Murietta, which the screenplay depicts as a South of the Border Jesse James. Murietta has turned criminal to avenge the death of his wife and brother at the hands of the Federales, and per the title robs the rich to give to the poor. A bit topheavy in its comic context, Robin Hood of El Dorado works on the level of a good program western. Director William Wellman cowrote the script, which was based on a pulp novel that emphasized the sensuality of Murietta's various lady friends. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Directed by Edwin L. Marin, Sworn Enemy stars Robert Young as "Hank" Sherman, a law student who earns extra cash by working as a chauffeur. His job becomes significantly harder, however, when he finds himself entangled in the effort to catch the mobster who murdered his boss and harmed his brother. In order to get closer to the killer, Sherman Young masquerates as a fight promoter, and in the process falls in love with his beautiful assistant Maragaret (Florence Rice). Eventually, the young man gains the trust of the mobsters, and is allowed to join in their gang. Once inside, Sherman rushes to avenge the deaths of those near and dear to him. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide

M.G.M.'s opulent costume drama Marie Antoinette marked a return to the screen after a two-year absence for reigning Queen of M.G.M. Norma Shearer. Shearer plays the title role of an Austrian princess who is married off to Louis Auguste (Robert Morley), the Dauphin of France. Marie, by becoming the Dauphine, finds herself plopped smack in the middle of French palace intrigue between Louis's father King Louis XV (John Barrymore) and his scheming cousin, the Duke of Orleans (Joseph Schildkraut). With Louis unable to consummate his marriage to Marie, she takes to holding elaborate parties and gambling her fortune away. In a casino, she meets the handsome Count Axel de Fersen (Tyrone Power) and they have an affair. But when Louis XV dies and Louis becomes King Louis XVI, Fersen takes his leave, telling her that he could carry on an affair with a dauphine but not the Queen of France. Marie vows to be a great queen and remain loyal to her king. But the Duke of Orleans is plotting against Louis XVI, financing the revolutionary radicals. When the monarchy is overthrown, Louis and Marie are thrown into prison, awaiting execution. But when word gets back to Fersen, he travels back to France in an attempt to rescue Marie. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

A standard-issue "screwball comedy" of the 1930s, Four's a Crowd starred a quartet of Warner Bros' biggest stars: Errol Flynn, Olivia DeHavilland, Rosalind Russell and Patric Knowles. Flynn plays a publicity agent hired to stir up "good press" for a nasty millionaire (Walter Connolly). Errol accomplishes this by going back to his old job as editor of a newspaper owned by Knowles, then using the paper to elucidate Connolly's virtues. Along the way, he romances Olivia de Havilland, who plays Connolly's daughter, and Rosalind Russell, portraying--surprise, surprise--Knowles' star reporter. Much to the amazement of the audience, Flynn ends up not with his frequent costar DeHavilland but with Russell. Fast-moving and chucklesome, Four's a Crowd was nothing new; chances are it would never have been made had it not been for the success of the vaguely similar MGM comedy Libelled Lady (36), which likewise had a quadruple-barreled starring lineup (Spencer Tracy, Jean Harlow, William Powell and Myrna Loy). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this thriller, a man is brutally murdered and an innocent man takes the rap. The real murderer later confesses his crime to his priest. The priest strongly urges the killer to tell the police, but he steadfastly refuses. At the end, the killer attacks and mortally wounds the priest. The murderer feels guilty for his deed and gives the priest a lifesaving blood transfusion. He then admits his crime and saves the innocent man from execution. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Often cited as a "model" B picture, Five Came Back is set in motion when the twelve-seat passenger plane "Southern Star" crashes into a treacherous South American jungle. With a hostile tribe of headhunters drawing ever closer, pilots Bill (Chester Morris) and Joe (Kent Taylor) race against time to repair the crippled plane and rescue themselves and the nine other survivors. It soon becomes tragically apparent that the damaged aircraft will be able to carry only five of the marooned party. It now comes down to a question of who will survive, or who deserves to: Spineless socialite Judson Ellis (Patric Knowles), his embittered wife Alice (Wendy Barrie), elderly scientist Spengler (C. Aubrey Smith), Spengler's devoted spouse Martha (Elizabeth Risdon), trollop Peggy (Lucille Ball), condemned anarchist Vasquez (Joseph Calleia), Vasquez' detective-captor Crimp (John Carradine), likeable mob henchman Pete (Allen Jenkins), or gangster's son Tommy (Casey Johnson)? Suffice to say that the ending is determined by random acts of courage, cowardice, and unexpected self-sacrifice. Scripted by Nathaniel West and Dalton Trumbo and brilliantly directed by John Farrow, Five Came Back was a major critical and financial success for the beleagured RKO. Director Farrow remade the film in 1956 as Back From Eternity. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When Fox bought the rights to Ralph Spence's warhorse stage mystery-comedy The Gorilla for the Ritz Brothers, they walked out en masse, refusing to work on the picture until their contracts were renegotiated and the script heavily rewritten. The finished product features an escaped circus gorilla apparently perpetrating a series of murders. Imperiled lawyer Walter Stevens (Lionel Atwill) may well be the next victim, so he summons detectives Garrity, Harrigan and Mullivan (Jimmy, Harry and Al Ritz) to provide protection. It turns out that (a) the murderer is human rather than simian, (b) Stevens is hardly a paragon of virtue, and (c) the person really in danger is young heiress Norma Denby (Anita Louise). Long unavailable for reappraisal, The Gorilla resurfaced on the public-domain market in 1976. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The once-in-a-lifetime teaming of Mae West and W.C. Fields in My Little Chickadee had the potential for comic greatness: what emerged, though generally entertaining, was, in the words of critic Andrew Sarris, "more funny strange than funny ha-ha." Mae West dominates the film's first reel as Flowerbelle Lee, a self-reliant woman who is abducted by a mysterious masked bandit during a stagecoach holdup. Because she refuses to tell anyone what happened during her nocturnal rendezvous with the bandit, Flowerbelle is invited to leave her prudish hometown and move to Greasewood City. En route by train, Flowerbelle makes the acquaintance of con-artist Cuthbert J. Twillie (W.C. Fields), who carries a suitcase full of what seems to be large-denomination monetary notes. After a lively clash with marauding Indians, Flowerbelle tricks Twillie into a phony marriage; she does this so that she can arrive in Greasewood City with a modicum of respectability, and incidentally to get her hands on Twillie's bankroll. Once she discovers that Twillie's "fortune" consists of nothing but phony oil-well coupons, Flowerbelle refuses to allow Twillie into the bridal chamber (he unwittingly crawls into the marriage bed with a goat, muttering "Darling, have you changed your perfume?") Through a fluke, the cowardly Twillie is appointed sheriff of Greasewood City by town boss Joseph Calleila. The plot is put on hold for two reels while La West does a "schoolroom" routine with a class full of markedly overage students, and while Fields performs a bartender bit wherein he explains how he once knocked down the notorious Chicago Mollie. Jealous over the attentions paid to his "wife" by Calleila and honest newspaper-editor Dick Foran, Twillie decides to gain entry into his wife's boudoir by posing as the still-at-large masked bandit. His ruse is soon discovered by Flowerbelle, but the townsfolk capture Twillie as he makes his escape. They are about to lynch the hapless Twillie when Flowerbelle discovers that Calleia is the genuine masked bandit. She urges Calleia to save Twillie's life by making a surprise appearance at the lynching and by returning the money he's stolen. When all plot lines are ironed out, Flowerbelle and Twillie bid goodbye to one another. Borrowing a device utilized by ZaSu Pitts and Hugh Herbert in 1939's The Lady's From Kentucky, W.C. Fields invites Mae West to "come up and see me sometime," whereupon West appropriates Fields' tagline and calls him "My Little Chickadee." The script for this uneven comedy western was credited to Mae West and W.C. Fields, though in fact West was responsible for most of it. Fields willingly conceded this, noting that West had captured his character better than any other writer he'd ever met. Despite this seeming gallantry, it was no secret that West and Fields disliked each other intensely, a fact that had an injurious effect on their scenes together. My Little Chickadee has assumed legendary status thanks to its stars, and it certainly does deliver the laughs when necessary: still, it is hardly the best-ever vehicle for either Fields or West, two uniquely individual performers who should never have been required to duke it out for the same spotlight. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One of the most schizophrenic films ever to come out of the Paramount "B" mill, The Monster and the Girl starts out as a white-slavery melodrama and ends up as a horror picture! Emerging from the fog, heroine Susan Webster (Ellen Drew) tells her woeful tale to the audience. A young innocent from The Sticks, Susan arrives in New York to seek work as an actress, but instead is tricked into a sham marriage with Larry Reed (Robert Paige). Awakening "the morning after", Susan is informed that her missing husband is not her husband, and that, as a fallen woman, there is only one avenue of livelihood open to her-as one of the "paid hostesses" in the stable of gangster Bruhl (Joseph Calleia). Learning of his sister's plight, church organist Scot Webster (Philip Reed) shows up in town to set things right, only to be framed for murder by Bruhl and his mob. After his execution, Scot's body is appropriated by mad scientist Dr. Parry (George Zucco), who hopes to transplant the dead man's brain into the body of a gorilla. Driven by impulses it can't resist, the big ape escapes from his cage to kill off all those responsible for Susan's ruin and Scot's death. Undeniably fascinating, The Monster and the Girl is also undeniably silly at times, especially in the opening scenes, in which the censor-plagued screenwriters work overtime not to overtly state that Susan Daniels has been forced into prostitution. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide